mentioning that I'd been an eyewitness to the holdup.
Skip was there, so busy behind the bar with the Friday-night crowd that I didn't bother to do more than wave hello at him. The place was mobbed and noisy, as it always was on weekends, but that was where everyone else had wanted to go, and I'd gone along.
Fran lived on Sixty-eighth betweenColumbus andAmsterdam. I walked her home, and at her door she said, "Matt, you were a sweetheart to keep me company. The play was okay, wasn't it?"
"It was fine."
"I thought Mary Margaret was good, anyway. Matt, would you mind awfully if I don't ask you to come up? I'm beat and I've got an early day tomorrow."
"That's okay," I said. "Now that you mention it, so do I."
"Being a detective?"
I shook my head."Being a father."
THE next morning Anita put the kids on theLong Island Rail Road and I picked them up at the station inCorona and took them to Shea and watched the Mets lose to theAstros. The boys would be going to camp for four weeks in August and they were excited about that. We ate hot dogs and peanuts and popcorn. They hadCokes, I had a couple of beers. There was some sort of special promotion that day, and the boys got free caps or pennants, I forgot which.
Afterward I took them back to the city on the subway and to a movie atLoew's 83rd. We had pizza on Broadway after the film let out and took a cab back to my hotel, where I'd rented a twin-bedded room for them a floor below mine. They went to bed and I went up to my own room. After an hour I checked their room. They were sleeping soundly. I locked their door again and went around the corner to Armstrong's. I didn't stay long, maybe an hour. Then I went back to my hotel, checked the boys again, and went upstairs and to bed.
In the morning we went out for a big breakfast, pancakes and bacon and sausages. I took them up to the Museum of the American Indian inWashingtonHeights. There are a couple dozen museums in the city ofNew York, and when you leave your wife you get to discover them all.
It felt strange being inWashingtonHeights. It was in that neighborhood a few years earlier that I'd been having a few off-duty drinks when a couple of punks held up the bar and shot the bartender dead on their way out.
I went out into the street after them. There are a lot of hills inWashingtonHeights. They ran down one of them and I had to shoot downhill. I brought them both down, but one shot went wide and ricocheted, and it killed a small child namedEstrellita Rivera.
Those things happen. There was a departmental hearing, there always is when you kill someone, and I was found to have acted properly and with justification.
Shortly thereafter I put in my papers and left the police department.
I can't say that one event caused the other. I can only say that the one led to the other. I had been the unwitting instrument of a child's death, and after that something was different for me. The life I had been living without complaint no longer seemed to suit me. I suppose it had ceased to suit me before then. I suppose the child's death precipitated a life change that was long overdue. But I can't say that for certain, either. Just that one thing led to another.
WE took a train to Penn Station. I told the boys how good it had been to spend some time with them, and they told me what a good time they'd had. I put them on a train, made a phone call and told their mother what train they'd be on. She assured me she'd meet it,then mentioned hesitantly that it would be good if I sent money soon. Soon, I assured her.
I hung up and thought of the ten thousand dollars Tim Pat was offering.And shook my head, amused at the thought.
But that night I got restless and wound up down in the Village, stopping in a string of bars for one drink each. I took the A train toWest Fourth Street and started atMcBell's and worked my way west. Jimmy Day's, the 55, the Lion's Head, George Hertz's, the Corner Bistro. I told myself I was just having a couple of
Skip was there, so busy behind the bar with the Friday-night crowd that I didn't bother to do more than wave hello at him. The place was mobbed and noisy, as it always was on weekends, but that was where everyone else had wanted to go, and I'd gone along.
Fran lived on Sixty-eighth betweenColumbus andAmsterdam. I walked her home, and at her door she said, "Matt, you were a sweetheart to keep me company. The play was okay, wasn't it?"
"It was fine."
"I thought Mary Margaret was good, anyway. Matt, would you mind awfully if I don't ask you to come up? I'm beat and I've got an early day tomorrow."
"That's okay," I said. "Now that you mention it, so do I."
"Being a detective?"
I shook my head."Being a father."
THE next morning Anita put the kids on theLong Island Rail Road and I picked them up at the station inCorona and took them to Shea and watched the Mets lose to theAstros. The boys would be going to camp for four weeks in August and they were excited about that. We ate hot dogs and peanuts and popcorn. They hadCokes, I had a couple of beers. There was some sort of special promotion that day, and the boys got free caps or pennants, I forgot which.
Afterward I took them back to the city on the subway and to a movie atLoew's 83rd. We had pizza on Broadway after the film let out and took a cab back to my hotel, where I'd rented a twin-bedded room for them a floor below mine. They went to bed and I went up to my own room. After an hour I checked their room. They were sleeping soundly. I locked their door again and went around the corner to Armstrong's. I didn't stay long, maybe an hour. Then I went back to my hotel, checked the boys again, and went upstairs and to bed.
In the morning we went out for a big breakfast, pancakes and bacon and sausages. I took them up to the Museum of the American Indian inWashingtonHeights. There are a couple dozen museums in the city ofNew York, and when you leave your wife you get to discover them all.
It felt strange being inWashingtonHeights. It was in that neighborhood a few years earlier that I'd been having a few off-duty drinks when a couple of punks held up the bar and shot the bartender dead on their way out.
I went out into the street after them. There are a lot of hills inWashingtonHeights. They ran down one of them and I had to shoot downhill. I brought them both down, but one shot went wide and ricocheted, and it killed a small child namedEstrellita Rivera.
Those things happen. There was a departmental hearing, there always is when you kill someone, and I was found to have acted properly and with justification.
Shortly thereafter I put in my papers and left the police department.
I can't say that one event caused the other. I can only say that the one led to the other. I had been the unwitting instrument of a child's death, and after that something was different for me. The life I had been living without complaint no longer seemed to suit me. I suppose it had ceased to suit me before then. I suppose the child's death precipitated a life change that was long overdue. But I can't say that for certain, either. Just that one thing led to another.
WE took a train to Penn Station. I told the boys how good it had been to spend some time with them, and they told me what a good time they'd had. I put them on a train, made a phone call and told their mother what train they'd be on. She assured me she'd meet it,then mentioned hesitantly that it would be good if I sent money soon. Soon, I assured her.
I hung up and thought of the ten thousand dollars Tim Pat was offering.And shook my head, amused at the thought.
But that night I got restless and wound up down in the Village, stopping in a string of bars for one drink each. I took the A train toWest Fourth Street and started atMcBell's and worked my way west. Jimmy Day's, the 55, the Lion's Head, George Hertz's, the Corner Bistro. I told myself I was just having a couple of
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